


Won't you please come get your baby?

by atreacherousoldwitch



Series: Won't you please come get your baby? [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brief description of injury, Brief period talk, Canon Compliant, Dreams, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Ginny Weasley is a cool mum, Growing Up, Happy Ending, Harry Potter Epilogue Compliant, Harry Potter is a great dad, Hurt/Comfort, Lily Luna might be a seer, Luna Lovegood saves the day, Major Character Missing, Oneshot, Quidditch Player Ginny Weasley, Sort Of, Starting your period, Visit from beyond the grave kinda, Weasley Family, auror!Harry, its difficult being eleven, not in detail, sibling relationships, slight reference to death, tween girls, very brief reference to drugs and alcohol blink and you'll miss it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23843479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreacherousoldwitch/pseuds/atreacherousoldwitch
Summary: Lily-Lu is ready.She’s ready to get her own wand and join her family already at Hogwarts. She’s ready for adventures and a little bit of mischief, for lessons and to finally start learning magic. She’s excited, a little bit nervous, but most of all ready.But when her parents disappear just before she starts school, vanishing into thin air without a trace, Lily-Lu realises that growing up is harder than she thought, and actually she might not be completely ready.Mostly, she just wants things to go back to normal, but normal is subjective when everything’s magic.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Series: Won't you please come get your baby? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722256
Comments: 20
Kudos: 43





	Won't you please come get your baby?

**Author's Note:**

> A/N - so I think this is the equivalent of showing up to a party once the party’s over, with a Starbucks coffee. I have recently fallen back down the Harry Potter rabbit hole and I had an idea that just wouldn’t leave me alone. I’ve written some stuff in the past, but not for a while and didn’t really post online even when I was writing, so this is new-ish for me. 
> 
> My only apology is that I haven’t even tried with some of the ages of the next gen characters. The Potter kids are roughly the right ages (I think), but everyone else I just did what I wanted. Sorry! I just really liked the idea of Lily Luna being one of the youngest and having this crazy overbearing family around her, and then that being a parallel between her and Ginny. I also made up James’ birthday, but its relevant to the plot! Everything else should be fairly accurate to book canon, canon pairings etc. but excluding cursed child. 
> 
> The title is, unimaginatively, from a song - ‘Maybe’ from Annie. I heard it when I was mulling this idea over and it seemed to fit. 
> 
> Enjoy!

————

It’s date night.

Lily-Lu’s parents have a long standing tradition of date night, because, apparently, with three kids her parents need some time alone.

She’s sceptical.

Lily-Lu is fairly certain they use it as an excuse to go out to fancy places and order fancy food, and that they don’t actually need any time away from the three of them. But whatever makes them happy. Sometimes her mum will bring her back dessert so she doesn’t like to complain too much. The sun is just starting to set, and she’s lazing across her parents’ bed, watching her mum get ready.

Ginny sits at the dresser in the corner. It’s covered in various make up items, tubes and lotions, and Ginny is peering into the mirror, carefully putting mascara on her eye lashes. She daps at her eyelids and purses her lips. Lily-Lu thinks her mum looks pretty, so says as much.

Ginny laughs, ‘thanks sweet. I think that’ll do, don’t you?’, and turns her head so Lily-Lu can see the gold glitter shimmering on her skin.

‘Very pretty.’

Ginny tugs on her heels, balances perfectly, straightens her dress and when she dips to kiss Lily-Lu on the cheek, she smells sweet and floral. Lily-Lu presses her nose into her mum’s collar bone and is rewarded by Ginny stroking her hair and scratching her scalp. 

‘I’ll bring you back some cheesecake’ Ginny whispers, and Lily-Lu grins up at her.

‘Gin!’ Harry calls from the hallway, and Ginny blows her a kiss as she leaves the room. Lily-Lu scrambles up, nearly collides with Albus in the hallway, and leans over the bannister to see her parents putting on their coats.

Her dad has put on a tie, and it looks like he’s used the beard cream she bought him for his birthday, judging by the pink shimmer on his jaw.

Once upon a time they used to have baby sitters, after all they have a never ending list of aunts and uncles to call on, although Teddy was always the favourite, but James is sixteen, _almost seventeen_ , and has promised to be responsible. It took a lot of convincing.

‘There’s food in the oven, make sure to eat it at a normal time’ Harry shouts up the stairs, ‘call Nanna and Grampy if there’s any problems, the floo powder’s by the fire place, and don’t stay up too late!’

‘We’ll be back before 11’ Ginny calls, ‘I expect you all to be in bed’.

‘And then we’re going to Diagon Alley tomorrow?’ Lily-Lu calls back, slipping her legs between the bannisters, hooking her toes over the edge.

Harry gins up at her, his eyes are soft and fond, the scar that creeps over his forehead and cuts through his eyebrow is on full show with his hair pulled back, but it doesn’t detract from his crooked smile.

‘Diagon Ally tomorrow,’ he confirms ‘wand shopping and then ice cream’.

Lily-Lu nods, satisfied. ‘Byeee’ she calls over her shoulder, and skips down the hallway, and pokes her head around James’ door, just to annoy him.

Her parents’ call their goodbyes, and the door slams shut behind them.

————

Lily-Lu is in bed well before eleven, she leaves her brothers to their own devices. It's on their heads if they get caught up past bedtime. They had a small incident with the blender earlier, but she and Albus managed to clean everything up so they don’t think that anyone will notice. And even if they do, she reckons her parents will just be grateful that it’s not something worse. They know their kids.

She tucks herself in, snuggles down, and drifts off thinking of Ollivander’s wand shop and Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream.

When she gets up in the morning, the kitchen is empty and her parents aren’t anywhere.

————

There’s a heavy feeling in her chest when she checks her parents’ bedroom to find it empty. It deepens and churns when she finds the living room empty too, the bathroom, she peeks her head around her dad’s office door, even though he doesn’t really like them going in there without him. She pokes her head around Albus’ door, and finds him sprawled on his belly, snoring, and James’ who has his mouth open drooling.

She feels shaky but she doesn’t quite know why, there are a hundred and one reasons as to why her parents aren’t back yet. She waits until half past nine, well past the time her dad would be up making breakfast, and then with her chest tight and feeling teary she goes into James’ room and wakes him up.

————

She sits patiently with Albus at the kitchen table while James re-checks the house, and lacking any other options floos their grandparents. Albus is solemn when he meets her eyes.

————

They’re hustled quickly to the Burrow, entrusted to Arthur’s care while Molly stomps around their house and shouts at the authorities. The Burrow is heaving with various aunts and uncles popping in and out.

Uncle Ron is more serious than she’s ever seen him, asking when they last saw Harry and Ginny, where they were going. He calls colleagues at the Auror department, and they go to the restaurant, a nice one in wizarding London but the report says that her parents never made it there.

Auntie Hermione storms into all the police stations in the area, in her best suit and court room heels. The police men are a bit unsettled by her, they can tell she’s important but none of them are brave enough to admit they don’t know who she is. They think she’s a minor politician, in a way they’re right, but it doesn’t help.

After forty-eight hours, they have no idea where Harry and Ginny are: no leads, no motive, and no suspect.

They put missing persons pictures in the paper, and the wizarding world goes mad.

Uncle Bill asks the goblins to help but they say no. He threatens them, drags up old history and they relent, but there’s nothing really for them to do.

Uncle George puts up pictures on every inch of Diagon Ally.

Puddlemere United loose their next match, as do the Chudley Cannons. James seems distressed by this, Lily-Lu isn’t.

It’s not until a week after her parents vanished that Lily-Lu realises they’re not going to be found. That this isn’t a blip, isn’t a strange dream, that this is her new reality. When a witch from The Department of Underage Witches and Wizards turns up with paperwork to give Molly and Arthur guardianship of their grandchildren, they ask the three Potter children to sign their consent. Lily-Lu spells her name wrong, so the paperwork is marked with scribbling out and ink blotches.

James punches a hole in the wall by the bathroom, but later he holds her hand under the dinner table.

————

Two weeks after her parents go missing, Lily-Lu goes to Diagon Alley with her Auntie Fleur and Cousin Dominique, who ‘absolutely needs some new robes for my last year _maman’_. It’s not quite the family day out that she expected, _wanted,_ but its better than nothing, and better than going with some other members of her family.

She loves them, but they don’t quite understand.

Fleur and Dominique try their best to make a fuss over her, they buy her sweeties and ice cream. They let her have a mocha even though she’s not supposed to have coffee, and even some watered down wine with lunch.

‘It’s watered down’ Fleur says when she asks, shaking her head dismissively ‘its barely wine. All my three were allowed to drink, it takes the mystery out of it. Your mother will thank me I’m sure’, and Dominique nods solemnly and then winks from behind her mother’s back. Lily-Lu doesn’t really like the taste, but she feels very grown up, after all, she’s _eleven_ now, and going to Hogwarts soon, so what’s a glass of watered down wine?

Although, she’s heard from James stories of Dominique’s exploits at school so perhaps drinking at a young age doesn’t take the mystery out of it? She’s not sure on that one.

————

Ollivander’s is a disaster.

Even with Dominique holding her hand and rubbing her back, and Fleur cooing soft nothings in French, it’s a nightmare.

Here’s the thing: Lily-Lu isn’t stupid. She’s seen this ritual twice already, was there when James picked his wand, and Albus picked his. She knows that ‘the wand chooses the wizard’ and she’s done enough accidental magic to feel secure in the fact that she _is_ a witch, and there _will_ be a wand out there for her.

But its hard to remember this when they’ve been here for an hour and half, and every wand she touches either bites, stings, or causes some sort of adverse reaction. She’s been drenched in water, set some papers on fire, blown out the windows and thrown not one but nine shelves of wand boxes across the shop.

Other families are waiting outside, some have left and come back, others muttering about returning another day, and she’s tired and embarrassed and forget being eleven and grown up she really just wants her dad.

Thinking of her dad hurts in a soft way, like an ache or a splinter. Small, but sore. He would make this situation ok, would look at her with his stupid glasses, and he wouldn’t get annoyed. He wouldn’t be stressed or anxious or frustrated, he would be calm and steady and say ‘don’t worry Lulu, we’ll try another one’, or ‘when I picked my wand I blew up half the street’ (probably, merlin knows her dad has the worst luck) or he might make suggestions, because he was her dad so surely he knows her best of everyone. He’d know which wand would suit her, what wood and what core and he’d pick it off the shelf and hold it out to her with a cheery ‘what about this one?’.

But he’s not here, and Dominique’s getting worried, she’s trying to keep it under wraps but Lily-Lu can tell, and Fleur is about to hex Mr Ollivander when Luna Lovegood saves the day.

Auntie Luna has apparently ‘been in the area, I need some dragon hide gloves because mine have melted’ (she doesn’t say what she was doing that melted the gloves and Lily-Lu knows better than to ask), ‘I heard that someone was having trouble so I thought I’d come and help.’

She breezes into the store in her dreamy way. She has apparently been dabbling in wand making, has been taking lessons from Ollivander himself, so the old man lets her drift behind the counter and inspect the wands they’ve already tried.

It’s another couple of minutes of their muttered discussions and Lily-Lu is sure that her hands are clammy but Dominique holds on anyway. 

Luna hums and nods, her blonde hair bouncing. Her eyes are huge behind the lenses she pulls out, and she sneezes at the dust on the worktop.

‘Try this one’ she whispers, ‘holly, 13 inches, dragon heartstring. Not a typical combination for someone your size or age, but I think this one might work.’

Lily-Lu is ready to try anything, so she ignores the way that Fleur’s eyebrows raise at the description of the wand, and reaches out. They all ignore the way that her hand is shaking, and she feels teary again, but when she grasps the wand - tentatively, she’s braced to get bitten again - she just feels magic rush over her, from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. She pauses another moment, just in case it was a fluke, and then meets Luna’s beaming smile with a very small grin.

‘Excellent!’ Fleur breathes, and Dominique is laughing. Even Mr Ollivander looks relieved.

‘I remember every wand I’ve ever sold, Miss Potter,’ he starts, ‘holly is not a very common wood in wand making, too stubborn, but supple. Dragon heartstring is stubborn too, and the two together are difficult to entwine. I remember a small boy coming in here a long time ago, with another holly wand, and as far as I know it served him very well.’ A pause, and Mr Ollivander pins her with a look, and suddenly he’s not a doddering old man any more, he’s a very powerful wizard who has dealt with one of the hardest disciplines in magic. She suddenly feels very small and very young in front of him, what’s eleven years in the face of over a hundred? He smiles softly, ‘your father’s wand is also made of holly wood too, is it not?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It is, trust me.’ He grins again, and then the power is gone, and he’s just a little frail old man again. ‘Let me give you a discount, you’ve been here for so long, and I nearly didn’t find one for you, call it 3 gallons, 8 sickles and 15 knuts and we’ll be even.’

Fleur hands over the money, and holds Lily-Lu’s hand all the way back to the Leaky Cauldron.

When they get back to the Burrow, she runs up the stairs two at a time and hides in her mum’s old room. She doesn’t want to hear the retelling of Ollivander’s, she wants to forget the day ever happened.

Albus finds her half an hour later, and curls up next to her under the bed. He’s kind of smelly as most teenage boys are, too much body spray, but he’s warm and she knows he misses their parents as much as she does. He produces a pack of chocolate cauldrons from his pocket, and they’re a bit squished and a bit melted but they share them.

————

Lily-Lu has insane dreams.

She’s always had vivid dreams but now, unsurprisingly, maybe, she dreams of her parents. Dreams they’re stuck somewhere, they’re in a dinning room with two men, and her dad is shouting and her mum is shouting and they’re stuck. There’s no doors, no windows, she doesn’t know where they are, but she feels unsettled when she wakes.

————

There’s a false lead two days before they go to Hogwarts, a description matching Harry is given at a muggle police station in Whitechapel. Or rather, a body is found with significant scarring on the face and everyone gets frightened for a couple of hours, and then Ron and Hermione come back and say, ‘no it’s not him’.

Uncle Ron is pale, and there’s something heavy in his eyes when Lily-Lu sits next to him, but he smiles and says that it’s going to be ok.

————

Lily-Lu and James have the biggest fight of their lives the morning after. It’s built over three weeks: three weeks of Nanna’s fussing and aunties fussing and no mum and no dad, and suddenly they’re shouting at each other over the breakfast table, because James is sixteen and stupid but Lily-Lu is eleven and precocious and they’re screaming like they’ve never screamed before.

‘This is your fault you stupid pig!’

‘No it’s yours you idiot!’

‘You’re so stupid’

‘Well at least I’m not a fu-‘

‘Enough!’ Molly shouts, and they spend the day de-gnoming the garden and weeding and they don’t have the chance to say two words to each other. Its for the best, because Lily-Lu is still angry and she’s been inventing insults all day, she’s just waiting for the chance to unleash them on him.

Teddy comes around that afternoon, and he and James disappear for hours upstairs, but when they reappear James is less angry and his eyes are red-rimmed and even though Lily-Lu still thinks he’s stupid she doesn’t want him to cry. She gives him the chocolate frog she’d been saving for 1st September, its the last of her easter haul, and mutters an apology and doesn’t stick around.

He finds her later, and they sit on the old camp bed in Uncle Ron’s old room.

‘I’m sorry’ he starts.

‘I’m sorry too’

‘I shouldn’t have shouted, you’re not stupid Lulu,’

Lily-Lu laughs ‘I know, I’m sorry that I swore at you’

‘What were you going to say? If Nanna hadn’t stopped you?’

‘I don’t really know actually’ she admits sheepishly, ‘I’d have made something up,’ and then she mouths the swear word she’d been thinking of.

James snorts, and they pause for a moment to both giggle.

‘I brought you a present’ James says, and he pulls out a hastily wrapped gift. It’s awkwardly shaped, and he’s obviously struggled to tape the paper around it. She smirks and he punches her half heartedly on her arm.

She unwraps it, and it’s … a tea cup.

A pretty tea cup, white china with blue birds and flowers around it, and she raises her eyebrows at James.

‘Ok ok, bear with me’ he says, holding his hands up, ‘so, there’s a branch of magic called divination, have you heard of it?’

She shakes her head.

‘So, it’s the magic of - like - knowing things, I think. Like, seeing things that are going to happen. And some of it is around interpreting dreams, and another around crystal balls, I think. But a big part is on reading tea leaves, when you have a drink of loose leaf tea it leaves like bits at the bottom. Some people think that you can see symbols in them and that will tell you the future.’

Lily-Lu turns the tea cup over in her hands, its small and delicate. She hooks her first finger into the handle, and it feels so fragile between her fingers.

‘I saw this when we were in London last. I thought you might like it. There are some books as well, in the library at school, if you were interested. I dunno.’ He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly.

The thing is, that Lily-Lu is actually interested. Really interested. She likes fantastical things, she likes grappling with things she doesn’t quite understand, and she’s worried a little that _learning_ magic will take the magic out of magic. But this is exactly the kind of fluffy and abstract thing that she loves. She looks up at James, and she feels a sudden fondness for her stupid brother, and she lays her head on his shoulder.

‘Thank you. I really like it.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

He wraps his arm around her, and rests his cheek on the top her head.

‘Tomorrow will be fine’ he whispers, ‘are you nervous?’

‘A bit. A bit nervous, and a bit excited. And a bit sad too, I guess.’

James hums like he knows exactly what she means, and he probably does.

‘It’ll be ok.’

‘Ok.’

————

The next morning is as chaotic as she expected. Running around with last minute packing, searching for lost clothes, books, jewellery.

Her other cousins arrive, the ones she hasn’t seen for most of the summer, and the Burrow is loud and cramped and utter anarchy. This though, is exactly what Lily-Lu was expecting.

Molly and Roxanne pitch up, and join forces with Dominique. The three of them seventh years, Gryffindors, and from what Lily-Lu has heard, a clique to be reckoned with. She’s sort of glad that she’s their cousin, it gives her protection _from_ them, because, after all, if they’re really horrible she can snitch to her uncles.

Rose and Hugo show up 20 minutes late, and Auntie Hermione is frazzled and stressed, and Hugo’s been crying because apparently he tried to hide in Rose’s trunk and is mad that his mother found him. He has another year to wait before he gets to go to Hogwarts. Lily-Lu gives him her last chocolate cauldron and ruffles his hair.

Fred is here somewhere, as is Lucy, and Louis is shouting for his father because he’s forgotten his beater’s bat.

Albus is all packed in plenty of time, he sits on his trunk by the front door, waiting.

Lily-Lu is lost in the rabble of her family, but her Nanna pulls her close and kisses her forehead, and her Grampy smuggles her more chocolate, and this is exactly what she expected.

————

1st of September is both better and worse than Lily-Lu hoped for.

There’s a moment on the platform, when Rose is hugging Hermione and Fleur kisses Dominique on the cheek, and Lily-Lu looks around for her own mother. For a single moment she turns around, and expects her mother to be standing right behind her, with her cropped hair, in her cropped jeans and harpies jersey, and she waits for Ginny to stroke her hair, or to hook an arm around her waist and press a sticky kiss to her cheek. All of Ginny’s children had spent their childhoods with shimmery lip gloss kisses on their faces, and she’d sent the boys off to school with them whether they liked it or not.

It feels like a blow when she turns and Ginny’s not there.

She thinks she’s going to be sick, and suddenly nothing is ok, and nothing is ever going to be ok again, and she’d never go to Hogwarts if it just meant that she could go back to that date night and pretend to be ill so they never left.

The train horn calls, and everyone dashes for the train, calling last goodbyes. Lily-Lu is rooted to the spot, and everything is too much, too loud, too crowded, and just as she feels like she’s going to kneel over, James shoulders his way back to her. He takes her hand and tugs her towards the train, ‘come on Lulu’ he smiles.

And she can breathe again.

————

Oddly, it’s easier once she’s on the train.

Because even if this had been a normal day, her parents would never have come on the train with her. She spends the train journey with James and her cousins. Dominique sits next to her and braids her hair so that the sorting hat won’t catch on it, and Roxy plays exploding snap with Molly.

Lily-Lu doesn’t know whether they do this normally, or if they’ve forsaken other friends to sit with her, but either way she’s grateful.

Albus and Scorpius poke their heads around the door half way to Scotland, and the ensuing banter is hilarious, and Lily-Lu snorts when she giggles and the euphoria of _actually getting to go to Hogwarts_ is finally hitting her, that she’s going to be sorted and have a house of her own, and she brightens up, grinning and she gets butterflies in her stomach when she puts on her robes.

————

When they leave her to Hagrid and the other first years, her cousins and her brothers cheer her on, yell their support and wish her luck and Lily-Lu turns back to the other first years grinning and embarrassed. Hagrid chuckles into his hankie.

Watching the castle emerge from the clouds as they float across the lake, Lily-Lu realises that she’s part of something now, something much bigger and more magical than she ever expected.

The girls in her boat are called Tabitha, Dacey, and Katie. When Dacey confesses that she’s scared because she’s muggle-born and she doesn’t know anything or anyone, Hannah and Katie laugh and tell her she’s stupid.

Lily-Lu narrows her eyes, and she’s not witty like Albus or honourable like James, but she’s her father’s daughter so she says, ‘I think this it’s stupid to make fun of other people’, and Dacey’s eyes are wide and grateful, so Lily-Lu reaches over and takes her hand. They hold hands all the way up to the castle and into the great hall. Dacey is shaking so hard Lily-Lu can feel it, so she whispers ‘it’s going to be ok.’

When Dursley, Dacey is sorted into Hufflepuff Lily-Lu cheers wildly.

When Potter, Lily-Luna is called, she takes a deep breath and sits on the stool. And waits.

And waits.

The hat whispers in her mind, and it’s like Ollivander’s wand shop all over again, and Lily-Lu starts to panic.

After an eternity the hat shouts ‘Hufflepuff’, and she can see James and Albus both jump to their feet clapping, and she hurries over to where Dacey is clapping. They sit close together, and look at each other, and let out slightly hysterical giggles.

The feast is everything her brothers promised and more. She eats more than she ever has (except for Christmas, but everyone knows that’s an exception) and has two desserts out of pure spite, even though the second one makes her feel a little ill.

Next thing she knows she’s being summoned by the Hufflepuff prefect, and they’re heading towards the west wing of the castle.

‘Wait, Lulu’ James calls from behind her and she turns to see her brother, all almost six foot of him, all stupid gangly limbs and stupid grin and she can see what he’s going to do the second before he does it so she lifts her arms up, and he scoops her up and swings her around in a circle. She squeaks. He sets her down and holds her close.

‘Well done!’ he says, ‘Well done, I’m super proud’, she gives him a watery grin.

Footsteps echo from behind them, and then Albus joins them in their hug. It’s an uncharacteristic show of affection from her stoic brother.

‘Seven and a half minutes!’ Albus says, ‘you were a hat stall Lulu!’

‘It felt like it was forever!’ she practically shouts back, fuelled by adrenaline and sugar, ‘I was so scared’

They laugh and tuck her close, she holds their hands and then makes them hold hands too, which they do despite grumbling. They stand there for a moment, a little triangle with heads bent together.

James holds them both close for one more moment, and then he pushes them back.

‘You should go Lu, I’ll see you at breakfast.’

He waves at the Hufflepuff prefect who has stopped at the end of the corridor waiting for them. ‘Thanks Harper,’ he calls, and the girl waves back.

Albus gives her a kiss on the top of her head, a habit he’s adopted to brag about hall tall he is now, gives James a punch on the shoulder that he returns and then they scatter. Lily-Lu hurries back to the group, and Dacey links their arms together.

‘They’re my brothers’ Lily-Lu says, and Dacey smiles.

‘I have a brother too, but he’s younger than me. Do you think he’ll be a wizard too?’

‘Maybe!’

They end up in the same dorm, with three other girls, none of whom are the girls they shared a boat with and they share a guilty giggle over that.

Lily-Lu tucks herself in, and snuggles down. She thinks of Hufflepuff badgers, and classes in the morning, and drifts off.

She doesn’t feel quite so alone.

————

This lasts exactly nine hours, because by the time she’s dressed, hair braided neatly and yellow stripy tie pulled around her neck, but with her top button undone because she wants to make a good impression but she’s not a swot; and her shirt untucked for the same reason but strategically hidden under her jumper, Lily-Lu is a bit nervous again.

She eats toast and nutella out of spite, because her parents don’t let her have chocolate first thing in the morning, and it does make her feel a bit queasy so maybe there’s something right in that.

She looks at her timetable, her day split into neat little squares, packed tight with _charms,_ and _potions_ and _defence against the dark arts,_ and it feels a bit surreal.

Dominique finds her sitting on the bottom of the stairs in the entrance hall, waiting for Dacey to finish with professor Sprout, because there’s no way she’s going to turn up to her first ever class on her first ever day _by herself._

_‘_ Hi Lulu’ she says, and she’s all back combed hair, dark eye liner and rolled up skirt. Lily-Lu can see Dominique’s red bra though her white shirt, and she’s sure that it’s on purpose even if she’s not sure why - Uncle Bill would have a fit if he knew.

‘Hey Dom’ she mutters, and wriggles her toes.

Dominique judges her quietly, and nods to herself as if she’s has something confirmed.

‘I have something for you’ and she crouches down, nearly flashing the boy behind her. Lily-Lu looks at her suspiciously. Her family have been very nice recently. Too nice. Her brothers she can sort of understand, because they’re stupid but emotional, but everyone seems to be giving her things, chocolates, tea cups, or tucking her away for little chats and cuddles, and Lily-Lu doesn’t dislike her family for this, but it does feel odd when she’s used to watching her back in case of frog spawn down her top (James only did that once and she screamed so loudly that her dad broke the bannister on the staircase jumping over it, and they realised that maybe goofing around like that with an Auror dad might not be the best idea).

And it looks like it’s Dominique’s turn.

‘So’ she starts, all seventeen year old arrogance, ‘believe it or not, when I started school I was so nervous, I was really scared, if you can believe it. My sister and Teddy were already here, and they tried everything, they would walk me to class and sit with me at dinner and I hated it. I hated every minute of it.’

Lily-Lu frowns. She hadn’t known this.

‘So eventually, when everyone though that I’d never settle, and my maman was going to send me to France for school, Vic sat me down and gave me this.’ She points to her wrist where a silver bangle sits. It has one charm on it, a sparkly heart. ‘She gave it to me, and said if I was ever scared or nervous to look down at it and think of her. And guess what?’

Lily-Lu shrugs.

‘It worked. I never stormed out of class again, or had a crying tantrum, because I could look down at it and see my sister. So.’ She pauses very dramatically, and Lily-Lu takes the cue that she needs to pay attention here ‘I’m giving it to you.’

She slides the bangle off, and helps Lily-Lu put it on. It’s a bit big, and the heart twists around so Dominique straightens it, and they look at it for a moment.

‘So if you’re ever scared or frightened, you look down and see me, ok? And if anyone is mean to you, let me know and I’ll beat them up.’

It’s more kindness than she really knows what to do with, certainly more kindness than Dominique has ever shown her before, the Ollivander trip not with standing, and she doesn’t quite know what to say.

She fingers the heart slowly, it’s very glittery, but looks like it’s a crystal and not just metal dipped in glitter as she’d first thought. If it was Victoire’s first, then it’s surely expensive.

‘Thank you Dom’ she mutters, and thankfully Dominique doesn’t labour the point. She tweaks Lily-Lu’s braids, and again, it feels like everyone in her family keeps touching her, little pets or gestures of affection. She wonders if they know something about her parents that she doesn’t?

Dominique gives her a jaunty salute, and slips off, winking at the boys who watch her leave.

Dacey comes running over, blowing her fringe out of her eyes, and they hurry to charms before the bell.

————

The next few days are spent hurrying.

Hurrying from class to class, to another building because they got lost, hurrying to dinner and back to the common room before curfew. Hurrying to the library only to find the book they want is checked out, hurry back to the common room.

By the time Friday of her first week comes around she’s _exhausted._

She’s lethargic through dinner, and a bit homesick, she’s craving lasagne but they always have fish on a Friday, so she gets battered cod and it’s fine, but it’s not quite what she wanted.

She puts herself to bed around half nine, pulls her curtains tight and wraps herself in a cocoon of blankets. She’s taken the blue blanket that they usually keep on the sofa at home, the one people use for naps, and she also snuck into the airing cupboard and took the fluffy striped one that they use when someone is sick. These alongside her actual duvet, her dressing gown with sparkly stars on it, and the various pillows and cuddly jumpers she’s smuggled in her trunk mean her bed is a soft and fluffy nest.

She also stole the fairy lights that usually live in her and Rose’s room at the Burrow, and she’s draped them over the headboard, so the whole bed is lit up by blue and purple light.

She’s in her summer pyjamas because her bed is now a virtual oven, but it feels very cozy and she’s contented when she snuggles down.

She can hear the other girls talking, Dacey is chattering nervously but Lily-Lu doesn’t worry - Dacey is kind and funny, she’ll make friends easily enough. Lily-Lu doesn’t even care if they make fun of her for going to bed so early, she’s so tired and when she cuddles the blankets to her, tucking them tight so there’s no gaps, no air pockets, it smells and feels like home.

It doesn’t take long for her to drift off.

But she has a weird dream.

She’s in the locked dining room again, the one with no windows and no doors, and her mum and dad are there, still dressed as she last saw them.

Her dad is still shouting, and he looks angry. Not, someone-made-a-mess-in-the-kitchen-and-didn’t-clean-it-up annoyed (James), or I-told-you-not-to-do-that-but-you-did-and-now-you’re-hurt frustrated (all three of them, many times) or even, you-told-me-you-finished-your-homework-but-you-lied-and-it’s-due-tomorrow exasperated (James many times and Lily-Lu only once).

He’s angry. Stern mouth and narrowed eyes and the stillness of an animal ready to pounce, and Lily-Lu has never seen her dad like this before.

She can’t quite hear what he’s saying, everything has a soft floaty quality, but the other men are shouting back. She skulks in the corner and runs her finger along the wall. A huge amount of dust comes off on her fingers so she rubs them together and watches it float to the floor.

The man sat at the head of the table facing her tilts his head and frowns.

She looks at the shelves that run along one side of the room, and opens a drawer to investigate what’s inside. 

She doesn’t realise that the arguing has stopped until she turns and everyone is still. They’re looking at the open drawer.

‘Hello’ the frowning man calls out, ‘is there someone there?’

‘There’s no one there’ the other man snaps.

‘It could be someone. It could be a ghost.’

‘How would a ghost get here?’

‘The same way we got here.’

‘We don’t know how we got here.’

‘Exactly my point.’ 

Lily-Lu shuts the drawer again, just to see and they all still, watching.

Weird.

Ginny leans forward, elbows on the table peering at the drawer. No, that’s not right, not the drawer, at _her._

‘Lulu?’ She calls out, and Harry turns his head sharply,

‘What -‘ he says, voice harsh, but Ginny interrupts.

‘Lulu? Baby?’ She calls but her voice blurs away, and the image fades away until everything is soft, like spots of light seen through a car window.

Lily-Lu wakes up sweating. She’s hot in her little nest so she kicks off some of the blankets, sticks one foot and one arm out of the duvet (but on opposite sides for balance), and reaches for a sip of water from the glass on her bedside.

Everything is still and quiet, it’s late or possibly very early so she rolls over and goes back to sleep.

————

Three weeks in and Lily-Lu thinks she’s getting the hang of things. There’s a rhythm to Hogwarts, she and Dacey have realised, a sort of ebb and flow of the different houses and the different years, a dance down the corridors, and they’ve stopped bumping into people now as they sort of know their steps. They now know roughly where to go and how long it takes to get there.

Her friendship with Dacey is developing, and she’s pleased to have a friend of her own who’s not her cousin. Dacey does the best impressions and tells the best jokes. They’ve partnered up for most classes, and they’ve partnered up in the dorm too - immediately pooling toiletries and snacks - and Lily-Lu has never had a friend like this before, where her problems are _both_ of their problems. When she got upset that she couldn’t figure out the charms homework it was Dacey who sat down and helped her and didn’t make her feel stupid at all.

And when Dacey gets confused because her parents are muggles and she doesn’t understand something, Lily-Lu explains it with no judgement and the grateful look in Dacey’s eye is fading away as though Lily-Lu’s help is no longer special but is expected, and Lily-Lu really likes being part of a duo.

Their friendship is cemented in early October, almost six weeks after meeting, and it’s cemented in blood.

Dacey wakes her early one Saturday, shaking her shoulder and she’s white faced and teary. Lily-Lu jumps out of bed and is ready to fight with Louisa, one of the other girls in the dorm who often speaks without thinking and can be quite unkind, but Louisa is still asleep and Dacey is pulling her over to the bathroom.

Dacey’s bedding is on the bathroom floor, and Lily-Lu doesn’t immediately spot what’s wrong with it.

‘What?’ She whispers and this is the wrong thing to say because Dacey is almost hysterical.

‘Look at the blood!’ She hisses, and sure enough on the light blue bedding is a patch of dark brown blood. It’s quite a small patch, and it’s dried so it’s not dripping and if she’s honest, it’s a bit underwhelming.

But Lily-Lu is aware that unlike Dacey she grew up with two older brothers who used to roughhouse and she saw James break his nose via bludger, and Albus fell through a glass door as a small child and that was particularly gory. She’s even seen her mum get hit in the face in quidditch and keep going until the end of the match even though she’s dripping with blood.

She also understands the significance of this moment - this is not an errant nosebleed, or a cut finger, this is their first introduction to _periods._

Dacey looks desperately at her, and Lily-Lu looks back, and then:

‘Ok. Don’t worry, I think I know what to do.’ She says with a confidence she doesn’t quite feel.

Dacey looks hopeful. ‘Really?’ She whispers.

‘Yes. Wait here.’

She rummages through her trunk, and nearly tips it out to find what she’s after. Eventually she finds the pack of knickers her mother had bought her only a few weeks before she vanished, after Rose and the unspeakable period incident (Lily-Lu never quite got all the details but apparently Uncle Ron did surprisingly well and she’s sure someone will tell her someday). Ginny had handed them over, and they’d had a very serious talk about periods and bleeding and things like cramps and PMS ‘which is 1000% real no matter what anyone tells you’ Ginny had hissed with a wild glint in her eye, and then they went out for lunch just because and she remembers that James was jealous.

She doesn’t hesitate in handing over the knickers, and instructing Dacey from outside the door to shower and clean up, put the knickers on, and ‘yes they’re magic they won’t leak I promise’ and then they scrub at the stain on the bedding, and on Dacey’s pyjama bottoms (and actually it’s more blood than Lily-Lu thought, and _oh my god it comes out of there?)_ and the stain fades a little. They put the bedding in the wash, find Dacey’s spare sheets and put them on her bed and by the time they’re settled and both curled up in Lily-Lu’s bed, Dacey tucked under the stripy blanket (because this is 100% a stripy blanket situation) the other girls are just starting to stir.

They ignore them. Lily-Lu and Dacey have much more serious things to discuss.

It soon becomes clear that despite Lily-Lu’s mum and Dacey’s dads’ best efforts, between them they don’t have the answers to a lot of questions. Dacey feels a bit sick, is this normal? Lily-Lu says yes, but they’re not sure. How long will it last? Should she write down the date? How does she get more of these knickers? Because the pads that Dacey’s dads have provided look weird and the pack Ginny bought only has 5 knickers in it, is this enough?

And it strikes Lily-Lu that her answer to most, if not all of these questions is: ‘I’ll ask my mum’, and this is not an option for her anymore. There’s a moments pause where they both think of missing mothers, and Dacey looks stressed again, but Lily-Lu knows what to do. Her mum may be missing right now, but merlin knows she has more than enough female cousins. One of them will help.

It takes a few minutes to get dressed, and then to evaluate each of her cousins in turn, to figure out who’s the best bet. Rose is closest in age, but she also had more than her fair share of period drama this year, and Lily-Lu doesn’t want to embarrass her (and also wonders if she can be trusted).

One of the older girls is the best bet.

They head down for breakfast and scope them out.

Sure enough Molly, Roxanne, and Dominique appear about half past ten, and they seem to be in a good mood.

Dacey is watching with big eyes, and it feels like an enormous responsibility on Lily-Lu’s shoulders, and she doesn’t want to let Dacey down.

‘Wait here.’

They welcome her warmly (of course they do, she’s their little cousin, and Lily-Lu is fairly certain that Nanna has been issuing threats about everyone being nice to her during this difficult time), and it’s not hard to ask Roxanne for a quiet word.

Roxy bends forward, looking in Lily-Lu’s face, composed and concerned. When Lily-Lu explains, she nods seriously, and comes over the the Hufflepuff table, pours herself a coffee, and says:

‘Right, ask me anything. No joke, I love period talk. Hit me.’

And they do.

It’s not like talking to mum. Roxy gives the gory details, gives practical advice and has her own fair share of embarrassing stories until Lily-Lu and Dacey are dying with laughter and cringing.

The questions get more in depth, more personal and more embarrassing. Roxy answers them all without a shed of hesitation. Molly and Dominique come over too, curious and indignant about being left out. Lily-Lu is fumbling for an excuse, anything, when Roxy says, ‘this is serious, ok, no joking, no freaking anyone out. We’re talking periods.’

And it’s as if she’s said a magic word because Molly and Dominique are simultaneously enthused and exasperated. They sit down, help themselves to bacon and join in the conversation with gusto.

It’s worth it, later when they’re getting ready for bed Dacey whispers a ‘thank you for today’, no longer stressed or scared, and Lily-Lu gives her a big hug, and lends her the stripy blanket (and she really doesn’t need that many blankets on her bed anyway).

————

She has more weird dreams, in the locked dining room. Sometimes where they see her but most of the time they don’t. She doesn’t really understand. She read somewhere that your subconscious can’t make up faces, and that every person in a dream is someone you’ve seen in real life, but she can’t for the life of her think of where she’s seen those other men before.

She supposes the locked room with no doors or windows is symbolic of something, and sure enough when looks it up there plenty of literature on being trapped. She wishes she could have better dreams about her mum and dad, where they were happy, but after thinking about it, she supposes it’s better than having nightmares about them.

She’d had horrible nightmares after reading Harry’s entry in ‘ _the most influential witches and wizards of the 20th and 21st century’._ She’d dreamt over and over of her dad, small and young walking alone into the forbidden forrest knowing that he was going to die.

The locked room is better than that.

————

She tries reading tea leaves, in her little china tea cup that James brought her. She has some success. Dacey is always a willing test subject, but as their days are so similar, its difficult to tell whether she’s successfully predicting the future, or if she’s just guessing correctly.

Lily-Lu ropes Albus in, and he gives her a chocolate frog when she successfully calls his latest essay result.

James accuses her of making it up, so he asks her to tell him a secret. She spends a long time looking in the cup, making a spectacle of reading the tea leaves to the humour of her cousins and Dacey. When she tells him that she knows he fancies someone and she knows who it is they all laugh. When she whispers the name in James’ ear - the pretty Hufflepuff prefect called Alice Harper - he gives her an odd look. She tells him that it’s because Alice fancies him back, and she’s heard the older girls talking about him in the common room, but she’s not sure if he believes her.

She can’t really explain how some sodden leaves at the bottom of a cup told her that her brother fancies Alice Harper. It weirds her out enough that she stops offering tea readings, and Dacey says it’s probably for the best.

She looks in her own mug, and asks the tea leaves where her parents are, but the answer she gets doesn’t really make sense.

————

It all comes to a head, sort of, with quidditch.

Dacey has never seen quidditch before, of course, so they trudge down to watch a quidditch practice before the first game of the season.

The Ravenclaw team is practicing, and Lily-Lu’s cousin Louis is the beater, and he’s said it’s ok for them to come and watch, so they wrap up warm with scarves and hats and take a flask of tea and settle themselves in. They’re half way up the stands, right in the middle, and they’re all alone so they put their feet up on the chairs in front of them.

Lily-Lu takes great pleasure in explaining the rules, answering questions and boasting about her mum as the Holyhead Harpies chaser. Dacey is a good audience, and sympathetic about her mum, so she makes all the right gasps in all the right places as Lily-Lu explains Ginny’s past games and her incredible wins.

But she gets so caught up in regaling Dacey with quidditch adventures, she forgets the first rule of going to watch quidditch, and that’s ‘don’t take your eyes off the match’.

A stray bludger heads towards the stands, and Louis dives to hit it away from them. He’s arrogant and half hearted, and he times the swing wrong. He isn’t quick enough in swatting the bludger away. It hits his bat on the back swing, and although he does deflect the bludger enough that it doesn’t hit them, he looses his bat and can only turn in enough time to see it hit Lily-Lu in the face and send her tumbling over the back of the seats.

She’s knocked out cold. 

————

She doesn’t wake, but she regains a sort of awareness to know that she’s dreaming again.

She’s back in the locked dining room, her parents and others still there, still arguing. Her father has taken off his tie, and her mother her shoes. They glance up, but it takes a minute for them to see her, and they still. She gets the feeling that she’s not very visible, that maybe she’s as dreamy and floaty to them as this dream feels to her.

Ginny looks at Harry. It’s a pointed look, one she’s seen her parents share a hundred times, but she has no idea what it means in this context.

She runs a finger along the wall again, in the same place she had before so the line in the dust is even clearer, and hums softly.

‘Lily?’ her dad calls out, carefully, cautiously.

She gets the impression that there’s a delay, because by the time she’s turned in response to her name he’s already in front of her, bending slightly to look at her face. He never just calls her Lily. He’s the one who started Lily-Lu, coined Lulu when she was small. She can’t remember the last time he called her Lily.

He reaches out, as though he’s not sure that she’s real, and she doesn’t like to see him so serious, so she smiles at him.

‘Hi’ she says, and he does smile, just a little.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asks, and there’s a scoff from down the table.

‘Ask her how she got here.’

Harry turns, ‘I will’ he snaps, ‘Lulu what are you doing here?’

‘I’m not doing anything. I’m just here.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘What do you mean?’ Lily-Lu is confused, and a bit worried. Her dreams aren’t usually this cohesive.

‘Are you dead?’ the scruffy man asks, ‘are you a ghost?’

Harry and Ginny both turn and snap at him, the room feels tense and tight, ‘Don’t ask that’ Ginny spits, and the man shrugs.

‘We need to know.’

Lily-Lu laughs uneasily. ‘I’m not a ghost. I’m dreaming. This is a dream.’ As soon as she says it she’s not sure anymore. No dream she’s ever had has been like this.

It’s like she’s lit a candle, or turned on a switch in a muggle house. Her parents light up, and even the men’s eyes grow with understanding.

‘Are you dreaming this Lulu?’ Harry asks,

‘Is that possible?’ someone mutters to the side, and the man at the end with the kind face, who’d frowned the first time he saw her shrugs.

‘I’ve heard of weirder things.’

‘What have you taken then?’ the man with shaggy hair asks, and Ginny doesn’t even try to hide her displeasure with him. ‘What?’ he cries ‘the other times she’s here she’s this little spectral thing, nothing more than a ghost, now she’s practically corporeal. She’s taken something, dream root or heroin or something.’

Ginny looks like she’s going to punch someone.

Harry crouches down in front of her, so she has to look down to meet his eye. He reaches out and takes her hands in his, stokes the back of her wrist with his thumb.

She laughs again, because this is absurd. ‘I haven’t taken anything! I wouldn’t -‘ she stumbles and looks at her dad, and he nods understanding. ‘I - I think I got hit in the face. Yeah, Louis lost his bat and it hit me in the face.’

‘He knocked you out?’ Ginny scoffs, ‘Nanna’s going to kill him. He’s lucky I’m not there, I’d do worse. He’s not allowed to use the bloody bludger at the Burrow, and he knows better than that.’

Lily-Lu tilts her head in confusion. ‘We’re not at the Burrow. We’re at school.’ She gets blank looks. ‘School, Hogwarts?’ she puffs her chest out a bit ‘I’m at Hogwarts now.’

‘You don’t start Hogwarts for another three weeks?’ Harry says, but his face is sad and he looks like he already knows what she’s going to say. Lily-Lu is incredibly confused.

‘But - it’s October. I started weeks ago.’

She immediately feels guilty, her parents both look like someone has just slapped them.

Harry shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. Ginny has her hands over he mouth.

‘October.’ Ginny breathes ‘you were wondering how long we’ve been here, its been two, maybe three months. October.’

Lily-Lu blinks hard, and the room swims in front of her.

‘She’s waking up.’

‘Lulu’ her dad grips her hands, and he’s serious and intense when he looks at her. ‘Listen to me, carefully, ok? This isn’t a dream. Or it's a dream for you, but for us this is reality ok. We’re stuck here. Remember this, we’re in number 12 Grimmauld Place. Say it back to me.’

It’s difficult to keep her eyes open.

‘Lulu’

‘Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Number 12 Grimmauld Place.’

‘I need you to remember that for me, please. Tell Ron and Hermione.’ Lily-Lu grips his hands back, as tight as she can and she nods.

‘Number 12 Grimmauld place’ she recites.

The world blurs.

‘Are you coming home?’ she asks, and she doesn’t really hear the answer.

There’s something pressed into her palm, it’s hard and pokes her but Harry closes her hand around it until she’s squeezing tight.

‘Are you coming home?’ she asks again, because this is important, ‘I really miss you.’ And the truth of that statement really hits her and her face crumples and her eyes water.

She doesn’t hear the answer.

————

She wakes to the dim lights of the hospital wing, to Nanna stroking her hair.

Molly Weasley is old now, a mother, grandmother and likely to be great-grandmother in the coming years (sooner, Lily-Lu suspects if her mother’s speculations about Teddy and Victoire are true) and she looks the part. She’s going grey now, and her hands are hard but her smile is soft and she’s the best person Lily-Lu could have woken up to.

‘Darling’ Molly sighs, and tucks Lily-Lu’s hair behind her ear, and Lily-Lu can’t hold it in any longer, this feeling of home sickness, the feeling that she just wants her mum and her dad and that she keeps having strange dreams that they’re stuck and it’s just too much. She weeps, and lets Molly hold her close. Molly sits back, tucks Lily-Lu onto her lap and rocks her, pats her back and lets her snuggle close, and hums softly. Lily-Lu weeps and weeps and when she thinks she’s pulling herself together it comes over her again like a wave and she chokes again.

She thinks she’s never going to be ok again.

Eventually, like all things, the sobbing passes, slows to snuffling and hiccuping and she just lies quietly tucked into Molly.

When she lifts her head, she can see Arthur on the other side, and he seems to be knitting. Molly reaches for a cloth, and helps Lily-Lu wipe her face, and settles her back on the bed. 

‘Louis is in detention’ Molly says, and her tone suggests she doesn’t think it’s a bad enough punishment. ‘He has detention next Friday as well.’

‘It was my fault Nanna, I wasn’t watching the practice.’

‘It’s not your fault, he thew at bat at your face’

‘I don’t think he did it on purpose Molly,’ Arthur says mildly, and when Lily-Lu catches his eye he winks at her.

‘I don’t care’ Molly snaps, ‘he should have known better. How are you feeling my darling?’

Lily-Lu tries to take stock. Her head still hurts, and her face feels puffy. She looks down at her hand, and she’s still got her hand clenched tight, so she relaxes her fingers and opens up her hand -

and it takes a moment to understand what she’s seeing.

In the palm of her hand, is a ring. It’s her father’s wedding ring.

Wordlessly she hands it out to her grandparents, and they peer into her hand.

‘Where did you get that?’ Molly asks slowly, and Arthur reaches out and takes it from her gently.

‘I don’t know’ Lily-Lu whispers, ‘Dad gave it to me in a dream.’

There’s a pause, and then she realises that the sentence doesn’t really make sense, and actually could be seen as quite profound, and her grandparents just gaze at her stunned.

Arthur inspects the ring closely, ‘this is Harry’s ring’ he confirms.

‘What’s number 12 Grimmauld place?’

They gaze at her.

Arthur swallows hard. ‘Where did you hear that?’

‘I had a dream, and dad told me that they’re stuck in number 12 Grimmauld place and then he gave me his ring. And then I woke up here.’

Molly and Arthur look at each for a moment.

‘Right.’

—————

She tells the story again and again. To Uncle Ron and Auntie Hermione. To Professor Mcgonagall and Professor Sprout. To the Aurors from her dad’s office. To James and Albus and Dacey.

She can tell that some of them don’t believe her, mostly the Aurors, but there are sceptical looks from most, and it’s starting to annoy her.

She’s not making it up.

Uncle Ron takes a group to Grimmauld place to examine it. Lily-Lu had no idea that her family technically owned it. They’ve never been there before.

They search it from top to bottom, cast every counter curse, every ward and hex retractor they can think of. They get Uncle Bill to examine it, Aurors, even the Minister for Magic, but none of them can figure it out.

Lily-Lu describes Grimmauld place exactly, gives details she could only know by being there, but they all know she never has. And Harry’s ring lies clear and accusing on the side.

No one has any answers.

—————

School returns back to normal. Sort of.

Louis is in disgrace with the family for knocking Lily-Lu out. Dominique landed herself in detention for shouting at her brother and hitting him around the head with her book bag. He apologies to her, but honestly she holds no grudge. It was an accident, and now she knows where her parents are so she can’t begrudge him that much.

Dacey gets a care package from home, and shares her muggle chocolate with Lily-Lu.

Dominique breaks up with her boyfriend, gets a new boyfriend, and the guys end up duelling over her in the great hall. This leads to all three of them ending up in detention for three weeks.

James gets a new girlfriend, Alice Harper, the Hufflepuff prefect and she has long brown hair and square glasses and they hold hands between classes. Alice helps Lily-Lu with her transfiguration homework, and Lily-Lu approves.

Albus and Scorpius have a fight, and then make up within 24 hours.

There’s homework and weekends, and dinners and halloween which always makes her feel a bit uneasy. There’s something off about knowing that another Lily Potter died on Halloween. Lily-Lu has always taken this as a sign that she’ll die on Halloween too. But not for a while yet.

The winter grows colder and the ache where her parents should be grows wider instead of smaller, and James’ birthday is approaching and Christmas is coming.

Lily-Lu tries to dream of the dining room in Grimmauld place again, but despite all her attempts she can’t get there.

—————

It’s Friday afternoon, and Lily-Lu does something she never thought she would. She skives off lessons. She goes to Madam Pomfrey, and pleads period pains, cries a few crocodile tears and when Pomfrey sends her for bedrest in her dorm, she sneaks out the front entrance and heads down to the greenhouses.

She’s only supposed to have access to greenhouse one, but when she tiptoes past the class in session and heads up to greenhouse three, she spots Neville.

She knocks on the window gentle, she doesn’t want to disturb anything inside, and Neville looks up and waves at her. She waits patiently until Neville opens the door and waves her in, and she’s not sure what comes over her but she reaches out and gives him a big hug. Neville smiles and holds her close and gives her a kiss on the top of her head.

‘Hi Lulu, I didn’t think I’d see you today’,

‘Thought I’d come and say hi’

‘I’m glad to see you’,

Neville gives her another squeeze, and lets her go, and waves her over to the corner where he’s carefully examining the mimbulus mimbletonia. They spend an hour carefully washing it, shining its spikes and talking positively to it so it grows. Lily-Lu decides that it needs a name, so he gives her homework and tells her to think of some, and they’ll pick the best one.

Spending the afternoon with Neville is almost like spending the afternoon with her dad.

Maybe that’s why the story comes spilling out. She tells him everything, slower and in more detail than she’d said before. She told him of the dreams, and the way that her parents were shouting and angry, that they didn’t seem to know how much time had passed. He dad’s wedding ring. She gets a bit teary, so Neville pulls out a hankie and daps at her cheeks. He’s so careful and methodical as he wipes away her tears. He always seems slightly mystified by children that Lily-Lu laughs and shakes off her sadness.

Neville listens carefully, asking the odd question.

When she comes to a stop, there’s a pause. Neville doesn’t say anything, his eyebrows are narrowed, and he’s thinking hard.

He waves the hankie at her, and she blinks.

‘I have an idea’ Neville says.

————

It takes a little persuading, and she has to apologise for faking an illness, but Lily-Lu is soon heading down to Hogsmeade arm in arm with Neville.

He won’t say where they’re going or who they’re meeting, and the excitement sparks something in her so she skips along happily.

They head into the Three Broomsticks, and Neville buys her a hot chocolate and he has a mocha (Neville is aware that she’s not allowed coffee, and unlike Fleur won’t be persuaded otherwise, he’s far too frightened of Ginny for that.)

They’re sat by the window, and then Luna swans it.

‘Auntie Luna’ Lily-Lu calls waving.

Luna joins them, huge bobble hat tucked on top of her crazy curls, and Neville kisses her cheek and buys her a hot chocolate.

An hour later, they have the outline of a plan, with some points to research, and Lily-Lu feels hopeful.

————

A week later Lily-Lu finds Albus sat outside the west courtyard with a black eye and a bloody nose.

She’s been walking back from Herbology with Dacey when she spots him, and for a minute she’s not sure what to do. Then she waves Dacey on with the others, and slowly approaches her brother. James is all fire, quick to temper and quick to cool, and largely Lily-Lu is the same. But Albus is another category all together. He has a long fuse, but when he finally goes he puts them both to shame.

She’s tentative, unsure as to whether he’s still angry, whether he’s calmed or something else, but when he meets her eye he’s crying and Lily-Lu is floored.

She doesn’t know what to do. She’s not sure she’s ever seen such an emotional reaction from him ever, and her presence doesn’t seem to stop him, if anything he starts to cry harder. The sort of uncontrollable snorting crying and he hides his face behind his hand and now he’s embarrassed.

But then Lily-Lu takes a breath, and sits down next to him, and puts her arms around him.

She’s not Ginny, and she’s not Molly, but she’s family and she wriggles because the wall isn’t very comfortable, but she presses her face close to his. She just lets him cry himself out, because although he thinks he’s a fully grown man, he’s only fourteen and his parents are missing too.

He holds her hand tight. 

—————

It turns out someone had made a snide comment about Harry, so Albus had thrown aside all logic, momentarily forgotten he was a wizard, and _thrown a punch._

James is thrilled. He pops his head into Albus’ detention and sneaks him some dessert. He says that their dad would have done the same thing, and after some reflection Lily-Lu agrees. Harry had once nearly gotten into a punch up with the other dads over a foul in her under-nine hockey league.

They eat cheesecake sitting on the floor of the trophy room, and joke until Albus drops his sour face and joins them. His black eye is already fading.

————

The first week of December Lily-Lu gets a parcel at breakfast from a huge owl with yellow eyes and brown spotty wings. They feed the owl bits of bacon and he flies off for a snooze, and when she opens the attached letter it’s from Luna.

The letter itself is a bit cryptic. She thinks she understands, but Dacey who’s been reading it over her shoulder looks at her with eyebrows raised and confusion in her eyes. Lily-Lu tries to pass it off as an inside joke but she doesn’t think Dacey is convinced.

She sneaks away to the bathroom between lessons, and sure enough in the parcel is a small vial of bright blue potion. It’s small, barely longer than one of her fingers, with a silver stopper. She hides it in her inside pocket, and pens a response back to Luna. A quick trip to the owlery to send the response and then she runs across the court yard and she’s only 5 minutes late to charms, and she blames it on the 4th floor corridor being blocked and Professor Flitwick nods and doesn’t take any points.

She’s antsy all day, and Dacey is suspicious. Albus is suspicious too, but apparently he has his own drama going on with Scorpius and Rose so he doesn’t have time to investigate. Lily-Lu is glad, if Albus pressed her, she’d probably fold. James is oblivious. He spends lunch at the Hufflepuff table holding hands with Alice. 

Lily-Lu keeps it together, mostly. She melts her cauldron in potions because she forgets to stir it counter clockwise and it bubbles over, but she’s the only one who hasn’t melted a cauldron this term so that’s ok.

Finally, _finally,_ it’s bedtime, and she goes through her usual routine, pleads a headache so the other girls leave her alone, although Dacey offers her a camomile face mask to help her head and Lily-Lu feels so guilty but doesn’t say anything. She draws her curtain, tucks her blankets around her, and then quietly, so silently, she brings out the vial and pops off the top. She downs it quickly, and then slips it under her pillow.

It tastes like thick yogurt, not nice but not unpleasant. She waits a moment to see if her stomach will rebel but it doesn’t so she lies down and waits.

She almost too hyped up to sleep, but a large part of this plan requires her to sleep, so she lies very still and breathes deeply, until ...

————

‘Hello Harry’

Number 12 Grimmauld place, the locked dining room, her parents still there, still angry and distressed. They look up, sharply and a slow grin makes its way across Harry’s face.

‘Luna’ he breathes.

Luna drifts further into the room, Lily-Lu hangs back, leaning against the wall. She watches as her mother embraces Luna, and at her father’s glance around knows that they can’t see her.

It makes sense. Luna has explained that she’s taking Lily-Lu’s place in the dream, but they hadn’t been sure what would mean exactly.

‘What are you doing here?’ Harry asks,

‘I’m just borrowing Lily-Lu’s dreams. Don’t worry, I’ll give them back.’ She nods, like that explains everything.

‘Luna we’re stuck, you need to go to Grimmauld place -‘

‘Oh you’re not in Grimmauld place’ Luna says, to stunned silence around here. She pulls out a chair and sits part way down the table, steeples her hands in front of her and gazes intently at the man opposite her - the one with shaggy hair and beard. ‘We’ve been to Grimmauld place, and there’s nothing there. You’re not there. This just looks like Grimmauld place, but it’s not really. I think I understand now.’

‘I’m glad you do, because I don’t’ the man snaps.

‘Sirius -‘ Harry says but Luna waves him off.

‘It’s ok. Mr Black, I think you’re stuck and because you’re stuck you’re here, because, and this is my understanding, you were trapped her for a long time. So if you felt trapped, it would be here. Is that right?’

‘Trapped where?’

‘Oh, between worlds I imagine.’

‘We’re dead Luna’ the other man says softly,

‘Oh no, I don’t think so professor’ she says simply, ‘you’re dead, but I don’t think Mr. Black is. I don’t think that veil really was death, just a half death, and half a death is half alive.’

‘Are you saying Sirius has been alive all along?’ Harry says

‘Half alive.’ Luna says, ‘but half alive is half dead.’

‘Stop talking into riddles!’ The man - Sirius - shouts, slapping his hand on the table.

‘Enough’ Ginny says, firmly and Lily-Lu twitches at the tone. Her mother is fiery, shouts easily and argues and they know she’s not really mad until she goes cold and calm, when she says ‘enough’ in that tone it truly means enough.

The men at the table evidently know it too.

‘Ok’ Luna tries, she still gazing very intently at Sirius, ‘in this room we have two people who are alive, one person who is dead, and person who is both who fell through an enchanted veil. Everything is out of balance. What we need to do, is return the balance and then everything will go back to normal. With two people dead and two people alive, you shouldn’t be trapped anymore.’

There’s a stunned silence.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Sirius says, but it’s not rude, it’s full of wonder.

She smiles and Harry snorts but tries to cover it up as a cough. ‘Luna Lovegood’

‘The same Luna you named your daughter for?’

‘The same’ Ginny says.

‘Merlin’s beard. No wonder she can dream walk. You named her for two of the most unknowable and incomprehensible concepts in all of magic: death and the moon. No pure blood would name their child that.’

‘Says you, _Sirius.’_ Harry says pointedly, but Sirius shakes his head.

‘Stars are not the moon. The moon has a magic of its own, just look at -‘ he breaks off and gestures vaguely to the other man who raises an eyebrow, ‘-well, and death is unknowable too.’

‘Anyway’ the last man says, professor Luna called him but professor of what Lily-Lu doesn’t know. ‘How do we restore the balance?’

Luna hums thoughtfully.

‘I think we need to break the hold that the veil has on you. Do you remember Harry? In the department of mysteries and we could hear whispering behind the veil? I think we need to tie Mr Black to something.’

‘Could we tie him to life?’ Harry asks softly, but the professor shakes his head.

‘I don’t think it works like that Harry’

‘But-‘

But they’re both shaking their heads.

‘Sorry Harry,’ Luna whispers ‘half alive and half dead he may be, but he’s been this way for a long time now. And I worry if we start trying to cheat death, it might take another to balance out.’

‘Forget about it Harry’ Sirius says softly, and he looks fond. ‘My time is up, I know that,’ and he grins at the professor ‘Remus and I will be fine.’

Harry nods slowly, and takes a deep breath.

‘Here’ Luna says, and she pulls a piece of carefully folded parchment from her robe pocket. She passes it slowly across the table to Sirius. ‘I did some research. Sometimes healers use a spell called _salva animam meam_ to save the life of their patients in the worst cases, as a last resort. It’s a sweet spell, one that relies on genuine connection and affection between the caster and the recipient. I think that if we cast this for Harry and Ginny and the reverse for you and Professor Lupin, that will be all it takes. I did some experimenting with it, and I’m certain it’s safe.’

Sirius takes the parchment and unfolds it slowly, he’s slow in reading it, and then he folds it back and puts it in the centre of the table.

‘Thank you’

Luna smiles.

‘I’ll leave you to it, and I think my potion is wearing off.’ She holds up her hands and they’re shimmering and fading. ‘Take care Mr. Black, Professor Lupin, see you soon, Harry, Ginny’

They nod at her, and shake hands. Slowly, slowly she watches and Luna fades, until she’s gone entirely ....

————

Lily-Lu wakes with a start, her heart is pounding in her chest. Adrenaline seeps down her spine and she’s chilled and feels full of frantic energy.

She’s going to see her parents again.

They’re going to be ok.

She gasps and sucks in air, but she can’t seem to catch her breath.

It takes nearly half an hour of cowering in her blankets before she accepts that something’s wrong with her. She’s not crying, not exactly but her heart is still pounding and she slips out of bed and pokes Dacey awake.

They end up curled up in Dacey’s bed, Dacey stroking her hair - clumsily, she keeps catching stray hairs and pulling them out, but sweetly - and whispering the story of how she came to be adopted before Lily-Lu starts to breath slowly.

She dozes off there, tucked against Dacey, and she doesn’t dream.

————

The next week is torture.

Lily-Lu is waiting, constantly on edge, because any second, any second now her parents will be here. Or Uncle Ron, or Uncle Bill or someone! Anyone and they’ll take her out of the office and they’ll tell her that her parents are ok.

But it doesn’t happen.

Albus seems to be getting sadder, and James is obsessing over his new relationship but she sees him sometimes, pursing his lips eyes far away, and _she doesn’t understand._

—————

James’ birthday creeps up on them a little. It always falls just before the Christmas holidays, so they never celebrate on the actual day, but always the weekend following. In fact Lily-Lu had forgotten, until she catches Dominique tipsily smuggling bottles of _something_ up to Gryffindor tower and she confesses that they’re having a celebration for his birthday.

She feels sorry for him.

He’s going to be seventeen, and their parents aren’t here to see it. It feels like a bigger let down than even her wand trip or her first journey on the Hogwarts express. She feels _guilty_ because she tried so hard to get them back for him, for them all, and it obviously hasn’t worked.

But Lily-Lu is nothing if not stubborn, so she concocts a little plan. It takes some bullying and blackmailing to get Albus onside, and she promises him most of her Christmas chocolate, but she thinks its worth it.

It’s much easier to get Dominique to agree to help.

It’s half past eleven on the 9th December, and in almost exactly 30 minutes James turns seventeen.Lily-Lu and Albus are up far past curfew, and she has nervous butterflies in her stomach, even though Dacey has promised to cover for her should anyone notice her missing. Dominique took James’ map earlier, so they’re tiptoeing along, creeping down darkened corridors. Albus won’t hold her hand, because he’s on one of his ‘I’m too old to be a nice brother’ phases, so she’s hooked her finger in the side of his top to keep him close.

Balanced between them, slightly precariously, is a birthday cake with exactly seventeen candles. The house elves in the kitchen had been thrilled to help, they’ve even iced his name and age on the top, and Lily-Lu thinks it looks great.

They climb the stairs up and up and up, and she’s slightly winded by the time the time they get to the top of the tower. The fat lady gives them a suspicious look, but the portrait hole opens to reveal Dominique and she beckons them in. They set up on the table in front of the fire. Or rather, Lily-Lu carefully places the cake, and pulls out the various knick knacks she’s got for James out of her rucksack and places them on the table whilst Albus watches. She fusses until everything is perfect and lined up neatly. Surprising her, Albus adds a small parcel and a card to the pile.

Quarter to twelve.

Dominique has disappeared up one of the stair cases, and has promised to send James down. When he appears in Holyhead Harpies pyjamas a couple of minutes later, Lily-Lu knows that she was right - he hadn’t been asleep.

‘Happy Birthday!’ she cries, and throws her arms around his waist. All she can think of is how kind Fleur and Dominique were to her in the summer, trying to makes a fuss of her on her special day, and all she wants to for James to feel the same kind of love.

‘its not my birthday yet, you’ve got ten minutes.’

And then he spots the cake, and the pile of presents, and his grumpy ‘I’m too old for this’ look melts away, it seems to slip right off his face, and he mellows.

‘Is that for me?’

‘Happy Birthday’ Albus says begrudgingly, and James grins.

They settle around the table, sat on the floor, and the Gryffindor common room is actually quite cozy.

James digs in, and opens the two cards, and whatever’s written in Albus’ makes him pause and clip Albus on the chin affectionately. He smiles at her drawing of a dragon, and says he’ll stick it up on his notice board by his bed.

‘Can I have some cake?’

‘No! Not until its your birthday’ Lily-Lu says, full of self importance.

They both try and shout her down. ‘You’re the one who started him opening presents’ Albus gripes, and James nods frantically. She checks her watch.

‘You have to wait four minutes.’

They grumble and moan, but she knows it's just for show, so she plays it up. 

‘Ok,’ she says, and then she brightens up because she’s just had a _fantastic_ idea. ‘You can blow your candles out at exactly midnight, and then we can have cake,’ and this is an accepted compromise. They have to rush then, to get the candles lit, in time, and they all crowd around the cake as Albus lights them carefully.

‘Right -‘ James starts, but Lily-Lu interrupts.

‘You have to make a wish!’

‘A wish?’

‘Yeah, a birthday wish, its important’

But by the time she realises what she’s asking, that this year he won’t be wishing for a new broom or a girlfriend, he’s already turned sad. There’s a pause, and Lily-Lu doesn’t know what to do to bring back the quiet happiness they just had, and now _it’s all her fault,_ but then James shows a maturity she didn’t know he was capable of.

‘I have an idea’ he whispers, ‘help me make my wish. That way it’s more likely to come true if the three of us wish it. And if it doesn’t come true, then it’s not my fault.’

A glance around, and they all nod. They inch closer to the cake, and then Lily-Lu makes them hold hands. They don’t fight her as much as she thinks they will. The three of them hold hands, a small triangle around the cake. The lighting dim in the common room, everything quiet and eery. Candle light flickers on each of brothers’ faces and they look older, and they look sad, but Albus smiles and its like the first glow of sunlight in the morning.

They each close their eyes, a minute to go before midnight, and wish.

Lily-Lu thinks of her parents. _Come home,_ she wishes.

Thinks of her mum’s smile and her dad’s glasses, and their shouting and joking, she thinks of being sick and being curled up with her mum on the sofa, of her dad cheering at her hockey games. She thinks of them as she last saw them, happy and dressed up. She thinks of the worst fight they’ve ever had, when she was young and how after they’d stopped shouting they sat on the back doorstep and whispered and kissed. She thinks of quidditch, and playing dress up, and tree houses and swimming and she thinks of her dad being seventeen, the same age as James now, and walking into the forbidden forrest by himself knowing he was going to die.

_Come home,_ she wishes, with all her might, and all the magic she has in her body. She squeezes her brothers’ hands tight, and they squeeze back.

The clock strikes midnight, and they open their eyes and blow the seventeen candles out together.

The windows crash open, and an almighty rush of air blows through the tower. Every light goes out, and they are plunged into absolute darkness. The wind swirls, and it’s like a storm, and it very nearly blows her over. It swirls and swirls and Lily-Lu can’t hear anything over the roaring in her ears, and then it fades, slowly, dropping, until its gone and they are sat in the dark, and the only thing she can hear is their gasping breaths.

‘Lumos’ James whispers, and his wand lights up his face,

‘What the hell was that?’ Albus says, and lights his wand tip too. Lily-Lu tries, but she hasn’t quite mastered lumos just yet. James sets her on the sofa, and goes over relights the fireplace, and it takes a moment but there’s light. Albus lights the torches on the walls, and then -

‘It’s not just us’

‘What?’

‘Every light in the castle has gone out. Look.’

And they hurry over to the window he’s peering out of, and sure enough there’s nothing but absolute darkness, where there should be the lights of the east wing and the halls. They should be able to see the lantern of Hagrid’s hut, but there’s nothing.

Silence and then Lily-Lu can’t help it, it bubbles out of her, small and excited and desperate and ‘do you think it worked?’

‘We don’t know that Lulu’ James says immediately, without hesitation.

‘But it was right at the moment we blew out -‘

‘And dead on midnight’ Albus adds ‘Midnight is very powerful in magic -‘

‘-the candles and that can’t be a coincidence’

‘-and we all made the same wish-‘

‘Stop guys please -‘ James sighs, and Lily-Lu gets the feeling he’s going to say more, but the portrait hole opens Professor Mcgonagall steps in. She purses her lips and raises her eyebrows at them.

‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘Its James’ birthday professor, we got him a cake and presents’ Lily-Lu takes the plunge, and she half expects Mcgonagall to shout, but though she’s stern she’s not heartless, and her face softens at the sight of the cake on the table. She taught their dad, Lily-Lu remembers, she probably misses him too.

‘Back to bed Mr Potter. Miss Potter and Mr Potter, you are both out of your dorms past curfew, 5 points from Hufflepuff and Slytherin respectively.’

They nod solemnly.

‘I will escort you back to your dorms, come now’ and she waves them to the portrait.

James loops and arm around her waist, and tugs Albus in by the shoulder, and the stand for a moment in a hug, and she’s been hugged more by her brothers in the last four months than possibly in her whole life. ‘Thanks guys’ he says softly, and squeezes them tight for one more moment, he’s like their dad, he’ll always hold on for one more moment that you expect, before he lets them go. He scoops up the presents and cake and heads up to his dorm, before shouting over his shoulder ‘I’ll bring the cake down in the morning, we can have it for breakfast’ and they laugh at Mcgonagall’s face.

They drop her off first, and when she says good night to Albus she whispers in his ear, ‘do you think it worked?’

‘I don’t know Lulu. I hope so.’

The dorm is quiet when she gets back, and she chucks her slippers in her trunk and sits on the end of the bed, and she hopes.

—————

James’ birthday is a success, generally, he has lots of thoughtful presents and apparently him and the three girls, Dominique, Molly and Roxanne, celebrate with a bottle of firewhiskey that evening, and he shows up for breakfast the next morning looking green and sick.

The morning before they leave Hogwarts, Lily-Lu is summoned out of potions and told to go to Professor Mcgonagall’s office. She wonders if this is repercussion from her little adventure on Tuesday night. When she gets there James and Albus are already sat there, which confirms this thought, but then Uncle Ron arrives, and are they really in that much trouble over a cake and some presents?

James budges up and she sits squeezed between the boys.

Ron sits opposite them. He’s tired, bags under his eyes and he seems to have gone more grey, but his eyes are bright and striking, and he’s grinning.

He’s grinning.

Lily-Lu’s heart starts to pound.

Albus grabs her hand.

‘Hey guys,’ he laughs, softly, more an exhale of air than anything else, and Lily-Lu knows what he’s going to say. What he has to say, Albus is laughing too and everything feels tight and stunned. ‘So I have some news - some good news. We found you parents. They’re ok.’ Ron rubs his beard and laughs again.

James is shaking next to her.

‘So they were stuck in some loop, or something. Time loop, maybe, only your dad merlin’s beard. We’re trying to figure it out still, it’s as if no time has passed for them. They’d be here themselves, but they’re in St Mungo’s.’

Lily-Lu’s stomach drops like lead.

‘Why?’ she barely squeaks out because that _was not part of the plan._

Ron is already shaking his head, ‘They’re ok. Right? Believe me, they’re ok, just worn out, magically and physically, but they’re going to be fine. They’re desperate to see you. They’ll probably be out at the weekend, you can maybe go see them with Nanna on Saturday maybe.’

‘They’re ok’ James says and its not a question but Ron says ‘Yes’, and suddenly they’re all laughing and James has scooped her up and Albus is shouting something and everything is loud and bright and _they’re ok._

It feels like the first breath of air after being under water.

—————

Lily-Lu can’t stop skipping. She skips back to her lessons but barely hears them, definitely doesn’t get the homework but she doesn’t care. She skips to dinner, and barely sees her smiling cousins, she taps her feet and fidgets and barely eats. Forty-Eight hours, max, and then she’ll see them. She has so much to tell them! So much has changed since she saw them last, she can hardly believe it.

Time seems to creep past, every second an hour. She can’t sleep, she’s too hot, and too cold, and the next morning she’s tired with a tight painful feeling in her head and behind her eyes and she just. wants. to. go. home.

She wants it to be Saturday, can’t imagine how she can possibly last until then. She’s going to explode, or implode or spontaneously combust. Albus isn’t much better, James seems to be coping but that’s more to do with Alice than anything else.

And _finally_ they’re on the train, and maybe they can persuade Uncle Ron to take them to St Mungo’s this afternoon instead of waiting until tomorrow. Lily-Lu is slumped against the window when they pull into Kings’ Cross Station, with Dacey squeezed on her other side, and they start pulling down bags and rucksacks, tidying away games and wrappers and she’s trying to spot Nanna out the window, its usually easy with the red hair and -

She screams.

It’s completely involuntary, and everyone jumps, and James grabs her arm and snaps ‘What Lily?’ and usually she’d yell at him for shouting at her but she’s shaking and -

‘Daddy!’ She’s pressed the window, looking back down the train platform, nose squished to the glass and she’s trying to open the window but this one doesn’t open. ‘It’s daddy!’

‘What!’ Albus shouts, and nearly trips over the bags in the middle of the carriage, he looks out the window. ‘Where?’

‘Are you sure?’ James is still holding her arm and he shakes her hard, and it _hurts_ if she has bruises tomorrow she’s going to yell at him, but it doesn’t matter right now.

‘Yes! Yes! It’s daddy!’ She shouting and she doesn’t care.

‘Go’ James says and he pushes Albus out the door and they abandon all bags and fight their way down the corridor. Dominique and others are yelling behind them. Albus draws himself to his full height, and elbows everyone out of the way and people are snapping at them and yelling, but James is behind her whispering ‘go, go, go, go’ over and over, and the doors finally open and they’re the first ones out.

They run.

They sprint down almost the entire length of the platform, and for one terrible second she thinks she was wrong, can’t see him but Albus is ahead of her and she wasn’t wrong.

She isn’t wrong.

Harry’s stood by one of the pillars, and he’s got a harpies sweatshirt on that looks like it might be mum’s, with his hair pulled back, and he spots them from half way down the platform, it’s hardly difficult because they’re making such a racket, and he’s laughing.

He steps forward and opens his arms, Albus crashes into him, and he comes up to above Harry’s shoulder now, and James bundles in the other side, wrapping his arms tight around Harry. He presses his nose into Harry’s neck, and he’s crying.

Lily-Lu collides with the back of her brothers, and before she can shout or have some kind of tantrum because yes, ok, she’s eleven and that’s sort of grown up, but she’s also only eleven and she hasn’t seen her dad for over four months and they thought he was _dead,_ her brothers prove that they are actually nice people who care about her, and they pull back slightly to let her squeeze into the middle of the hug.

She wraps her arms around Harry’s middle, and looks up at him. She can’t quite see his face from where he’s pressed against her brothers, but it doesn’t matter.

Everything’s ok again.

She can hear sniffles and James is properly crying, and Albus is laughing, and Harry is taking really deep breaths, she can feel it with her arms wrapped around him.

‘Ok, ok’ Harry says, and he pulls back slightly, ‘let me have a look at you’, James won’t let him go, she thinks he’s embarrassed by the tears, but Harry looks at Albus and Lily-Lu closely, peers in their faces as if he can’t quite believe that they’re real. He strokes his hand over the top of their heads, and their cheeks, he rubs his thumb over Lily-Lu’s eyebrow.

James pulls back slightly, and Harry ruffles his hair and strokes his cheek too, even though James is of a height with him now.

He wraps his arms around the three of them again, and Lily-Lu thinks she should be a little embarrassed because these kinds of soppy family reunions are always a bit cringey, but she doesn’t care, not even a little bit.

But there’s one thing -

‘Where’s mum?’ she asks,

‘At the Burrow. She’s ok, she’s just tired. She wanted to come and see you off the train, but Nanna made her stay.’ He looks down at her and he smiles, and its so genuine that she doesn’t worry. Mum’s fine.

‘Here’s your stuff you guys’ Dominique shouts, and when they turn, she’s dropped their rucksacks on the floor, and is staring with folded arms. The corner of her mouth is twisted, and she’s trying not to smile.

‘Thanks Dom’ Harry says.

—————

It’s like they’ve all regressed to being small children again: they don’t want to let go of him. They shove and push and Harry has an arm slung over Albus’ shoulders and the other over James’, and he’s holding Lily-Lu’s hand.

Harry says goodbye to the man he was talking to before they came running, apparently his cousin or something, and they get back to the Burrow with little fuss.

Ginny is sat at the kitchen table with Molly, wrapped in a dressing grown drinking tea.

Lily-Lu has a lump in her throat, and her chest feels tight, and when Ginny holds her close she doesn’t want to let go ever. She spends the evening tucked against Ginny, sat on her lap or pressed up against her side, and she dozes off with her nose pressed against Ginny’s collar bone.

She wakes a little when Harry puts her to bed, and she’s eleven and she doesn’t need to be tucked in, but it’s the first time in months that she hasn’t had to put herself to bed so she allows it.

He pulls the blankets around her, no gaps or air pockets, and puts his face close to hers.

‘Sweet dreams,’ he whispers ‘we’ll talk about it all in the morning,’ and he strokes her hair until she falls asleep. 

She has a weird dream, but she doesn’t think this one is real.

Hopefully. 

———

It takes days for them to get back to normal.

Ginny and Harry get a clean bill of health, and they’re all shipped out of the Burrow and back to their actual house, the one they haven’t been in since that horrible week in early August. There’s rotten food in the cupboard, and dirty clothes in the wash basket, and the house smells stale and old. They all left in such a rush that no-one - not even Molly - though of these things. So they spend the first twenty-four hours cleaning, washing. Lily-Lu bakes some brownies in penance for taking the blue blanket from the sofa _and_ the stripy blanket to Hogwarts.

Her brothers’ are outraged to find that she’s had them hidden in her dorm this whole time. She has to confess to the other little trinkets she’s taken, like the fairy lights and some of Ginny’s make up pots, but her apologies are insincere and interspersed with giggles. Albus uses a spatula to bang on the table in imitation of a judge and they try and put her on the stand for theft. The brownies appease them eventually, and Ginny laughs so hard juice comes out of her nose, and that sets off another round of laughter, until they’re all weak with it.

Harry disappears for an hour, and comes back with more blankets: a soft purple throw, a blue and green spotty one, a sparkly silver one that Lily-Lu immediately has her eyes on and a yellow knitted one. He tucks them over the back of the sofa. He tells her she can have the sparkly blanket for her bed at school as long as she brings the stripy one back home.

She agrees easily. The stripy blanket had sentimental value - she doesn’t need it now that every things back to normal. Ginny says she can keep the make up pots.

They spend the next day in pyjamas, all of them, even her parents. They have brunch late, piles of eggs and bacon and pancakes, and they talk. Albus snitches about James’ girlfriend, so they start there. They discuss Hogwarts’ gossip in depth, grades and homework, after curriculars. They relive Lily-Lu’s Diagon Alley trip and her sorting, and enough time has passed now that they seem like hilarious tales, but she can see that her parents understand what’s not said.

They talk about Dacey, and Lily-Lu is floored to find out that they’re cousins.

They talk about the Scorpius-Rose-Albus drama, and Lily-Lu listens with wide eyes, grin hidden behind her hands.

They talk about quidditch, and Uncle George’s shop.

About James’ birthday, and the birthday wish and the locked dining room in Grimmauld place. They talk about dreams and tea leaves, and it leaves Harry with his eye brows raised, her brothers’ looking at her incredulously, but Ginny grins like its the best thing she’s ever heard so Lily-Lu doesn’t worry.

Harry and Ginny discuss under their breaths for a moment, a conversation full of meaningful looks and raised eye brows, but then they agree to speak to someone at Hogwarts about this _talent._ There’s a mention of private lessons maybe, and Lily-Lu doesn’t know what to think of that, but it’s a problem for another time, not this bright sunny morning full of family and love.

————

Her parents are sneaky.

The day before Christmas eve the boys are otherwise amused (she thinks Albus has gone to the Burrow, possibly James has gone to see Alice, they were already gone when she got up) and they float the idea of ice cream, which of course she jumps on because yes she’s had ice cream since they left, but she hasn’t had a Florean Fortescue _Sundae_ in such a long time. When she went with Fleur and Dominique they just had one scoop, which was yummy, but it wasn’t four scoops of whatever flavour you want toped with fruit or ice mice or chocolate chips or _whatever other topping you could possibly think of_ yummy.

It doesn’t matter that its the middle of December. One of the fundamental rules of Lily-Lu’s family is that ice cream can be had no matter what time of year, even (and especially) if you have to wear gloves and hats to get there.

The shop is nearly empty, perhaps as expected, but Florean Fortescue himself is there and makes a fuss over them. They sit in the corner, with Harry facing the room and the girls facing him. Ginny and Harry are having a conversation, but Lily-Lu isn’t listening, too intent on reading the menu and figuring out the best combination for optimum sundae. Too much chocolate and its too sickly, and she won’t be able to finish it, she needs some fruit to counter balance this. Strawberries maybe, or banana.

By the time she’s decided, both her parents are watching her slightly fond, and she’s a bit embarrassed. But ice cream sundaes are a serious matter.

They order, and Lily-Lu settles in.

Her parents exchange a look, and Harry starts.

‘Right’ he says, ‘we want to talk to you about the dreams you’ve been having.’

And Lily-Lu looks up from her fizzy drink, and knows she’s been had. She can’t avoid the topic as she’s been doing so far, she can’t leave because where would she go, she can’t deflect to her brothers. This conversation is happening, and they used ice cream to pin her down. She narrows her eyes.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk about it, but she doesn’t know what they want to say, she doesn’t know why its a big deal - they’re here, surely that’s what matters?

Ginny takes over, ‘How long have these been going on Lulu?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How long have you been having dreams like this? That are -‘ Ginny hesitates ‘-real?’ she settles on, and Lily-Lu sucks through her straw noisily.

‘I don’t know’ she says eventually, she’s forgotten that she can’t wait them out, her dad in particular has an insane amount of patience. He never cracks first. ‘I’ve always had dreams, but I didn’t know that it was anything more than a dream until I saw you. And even then I didn’t know it was real for a while.’

Harry nods like he’d expected that answer.

‘But not every dream I have is real’ she says hurriedly, she doesn’t want them to think she’s some prophet, ‘otherwise there are some really strange things happening out there.’

‘And the tea leaves?’ Harry says,

‘That started out as a joke, I was just playing and guessing. And then I guessed that James had a crush on Alice, and then I realised that it might not be just playing.’

‘What do you see in the tea leaves?’ Ginny asks,

That stumps her, actually. Because she doesn’t really see anything in the tea leaves.

‘Nothing, really, they’re just tea leaves. But it’s like if I look in a certain way, like if I close my eyes a bit and tilt my head,’ she demonstrates, ‘then I can - I don’t know. Guess something. See something in the cup and then it kinda means something. I don’t think its really the tea leaves. I don’t know. I stopped doing it when I realised it might be something.’

‘Can you show me?’ Harry asks softly, and she nods.

‘It doesn’t always work though’

‘It doesn’t matter’ and he waves the waitress over and a couple of minutes later Harry chugs a cup of loose leaf lavender tea and burns his tongue. He leaves the dregs at the bottom, and passes the cup over.

She takes it from him carefully, and swills the bit at the bottom around the cup. She tips it out quickly into the saucer, and then looks at the bottom. She glances up and they’re both watching her intently. She’s suddenly a bit shy, she’s never done this for an audience before - or rather for an audience that believe she’s being serious. The others thought she was conning them. She looks at the leaves left in the tea cup, and focuses on them. She narrows her eyes and tilts her head, she turns the cup around and around, and tilts her head back and forth.

She can feel that it was her dad’s tea, that’s certain, but she doesn’t quite know how. Just that he’s familiar, and the cup now feels like him. The leaves are stationary, not slipping or moving and they’re just in blotches, nothing concrete or symbolic. She’s about to give it up, when she focuses her eyes to the right ever so slightly, and then -

She hums, ‘something about water, maybe. Try - try and stay dry?’ but it sounds like a question rather than a statement, and she’s not sure at all. She looks up sheepishly, but Harry and Ginny are solemn.

Harry nods seriously, thinking hard ‘Something about water. Try and stay dry’ he repeats back, ‘that’s good advice, I’ll keep it in mind’ and he smiles, and then he’s her dad again and why was she getting so worried about it all.

‘She’s definitely doing something’ Ginny says to Harry, ‘I could feel the magic from here.’

‘I didn’t mean to do magic’ she says, momentarily startled, she’s not supposed to do magic outside of school.

‘It’s ok,’ Ginny says, ‘it’s not that kind of magic. It’s a bit more subtle than casting spells or hexes. We’re all magic, magic is something that you both are and that you have. This is related to the magic you are, I think.’

‘And you’ve always had vivid dreams’ Harry says, ‘even when you were little, you could always tell me the dreams you’d had.’

The sundaes arrive then, interrupting, and she digs into hers even though she’s lost her appetite a bit.

‘You know you’re not in trouble, right?’ Ginny says suddenly, her eyes intense. ‘That this isn’t something bad or that we’re angry about. We just want to know what’s going on so we can help you. Teach you how to manage it, if necessary, so it’s not something that gets out of control. It’s the same reason children have to learn how to control their magic, because if they don’t then it can be dangerous.’

‘I didn’t think I was in trouble’ Lily-Lu mutters, but she’s obviously not convincing because Ginny puts her arm around her, and Harry leans over the table and takes her hand. His whole face is soft and gentle and once again she feels a sick stab at how much she’s missed them.

‘You’re not in trouble.’ Harry confirms, ‘and you’re not weird or strange, ok? You have a talent here, and we’ll help you with it, if you want. And if you don’t want to pursue it then we’ll make sure its under control and leave it there.’

‘I’d like to know how it works’ she says quietly, and they nod.

‘Then we’ll find someone in this area who can tutor you, help us all understand it,’ Ginny says, with a sense of accomplishment, a sort of finality. Harry senses it too, and he takes a big scoop of his sundae and shoves it in his mouth. Lily-Lu snorts.

They move the conversation back to lighter topics, and Lily-Lu demolishes her sundae after all.

————

Harry goes for a run later. He doesn’t take a coat or an umbrella, and comes back drenched to the bone when the weather turned suddenly.

Ginny howls with laugher, and with a bit of encouragement from her mother, Lily-Lu says ‘I told you so.’

Harry takes it in good spirits.

————

‘Can I ask you a question?’ Lily-Lu whispers. It’s late on boxing day, almost midnight and the boys wondered upstairs a while ago but she doesn’t think they’re in bed, and Ginny went up half an hour ago with a gentle ‘don’t stay up too late’, but Lily-Lu is tucked in the big arm chair with Harry and she’s so comfy she doesn’t want to move. She’s squished in between the arm of the chair and him, except there’s not really enough space, so she’s all but sat on his lap with the sparkly blanket tucked around them and her head on his shoulder and her toes tucked under his knee.

The lights are dim, and the TV is is showing an old movie without colour and the men on the screen are pointing things at each other and shouting.

‘Of course’ he whispers back, and squints down at her.

‘Its a bit personal’

But Harry smiles, ‘ask me anything. I’ll answer if I can.’

There’s a pause, and she just listens to their breathing.

‘People thought that we were orphans, for a while, when you were gone.’

He hums, but doesn’t say anything. It’s not quite a question.

‘And I didn’t really like it, it made me feel bad, like really sad. I wondered if you felt like that ever?’ It’s not quite the question she wants to ask, but it’s close enough. He doesn’t really talk about his parents and she doesn’t want to upset him.

But thankfully, he’s not upset.

‘About my parents?’ he says, and she nods, ‘I was sad for a long time. I felt like I was missing something. But family is not only about parents or blood family, and I found it in Ron and Hermione, in Nanna and Grampy, they’ve been parents to me for a long time now, even before your mum and I were married.’

‘Do you miss them?’ it’s a tiny whisper, ‘still?’

‘Sometimes. I don’t think I’ll ever not, but the sad thing is that I didn’t know them. Not really, I was only a baby when they died, and I’m sad for that but I can’t grieve them as people because I didn’t know. Does that make sense?’

There’s a moment, and Lily-Lu can’t find the words to explain what she wants to say, but then Harry gets it, gets what she’s asking, and he hugs her tight.

‘But I’m not lonely Lulu, I have a family, a wonderful family and I’m happy. Truly happy, happier than I thought I could ever be. And the thing about grief, and hurt, is that eventually, and it might take a long time, but eventually you heal. And you’ll always remember the people you’ve lost, and it’ll always hurt a little bit and be sad, but it heals. I’ll always be sad for my parents, but they gave their lives so I could live, and I’m grateful for that. And it was a long time ago now.’

She pushes herself up and looks him in the eye, and he meets her gaze steadily.

‘And you’re not lonely?’ she confirms,

‘No.’

‘I don’t want you to be sad,’ and it’s a childish wish because that’s out of her control, but he smiles.

‘Sometimes I’ll be sad, and that’s inevitable for everyone. But I’m not sad very often and not for very long. How could I be when I have such a wonderful family?

‘How can I be sad when I have you?’

And he stokes her cheek until she smiles.

————

New years is different this year.

Usually it would be spent at the Burrow, shared with family there, but this year they spend it just the five of them. They go out for dinner, to a nice restaurant in muggle London.

They order too much food, Lily-Lu tries mussels and oysters and finds them delicious to James’ disgust. Albus has a steak that is basically raw, Harry sticks to the very safe cod and chips.

The go home after dinner, and watch the TV.

When the count down begins, they huddle together, giddy with laughter, and shout along. Harry gathers them all close, and no-one complains, and they cheer in the new year.

————

When Lily-Lu steps onto platform 9 3/4 at the beginning of January, it feels very different to when she got on the train in September. 

She knows where she’s going, and what she’s doing. She has a house, Hufflepuff, the best one obviously, and a dorm and classmates and friends. She has Dacey, who she’s been writing to all holiday, and, most importantly she has her family back.

When she waves goodbye from the carriage window, she’s ready for anything the second term can possibly throw at her.

Bring it on.

She’s ready.

————

END.


End file.
